The 12 men and women featured in Susan Polis Schutz's documentary "Seeds of Resiliency" have all worked awfully hard at overcoming tragedy, even if Schutz herself hasn't done a whole lot to make her film little more than a strung-together collection of interviews set to piano muzak. More like something you'd see at a seminar on perseverance than a movie, the featured interviewees are nevertheless remarkable examples of triumph: a young man born with spina bifida who can do flips in his wheelchair, an escapee of Idi Amin's regime who now helps African refugees, a Korean professor who quickly returned to teaching after becoming a quadriplegic.

Re "Joining the Valley do-gooders," So-Cal Life, March 12 I thank Eryn Brown for writing about her realization that there is an organized "small army" of people willing to invest the time and energy to preserve and protect neighborhoods and communities in the San Fernando Valley from overdevelopment and traffic. Teaching "How to Be a Community Activist" is akin to a gardener planting seeds with the hope that they all will sprout under the right conditions. That's my planting plan for those in my class that day. ELLEN VUKOVICH Sherman Oaks

Schools seeded ninth or lower in the NCAA basketball tournament that have advanced to the regional semifinals since 1979 when the NCAA began seeding all teams: *--* 1979 Pennsylvania (9**), St. John's (10*) 1980 Lamar (10) 1981 St.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court gave a victory to Monsanto and other makers of patented seeds Monday, ruling they can prohibit farmers from growing a second crop from their genetically engineered seeds. In a unanimous decision, the court said the patent for a specialized seed outlives the first planting. Otherwise, these seed patents would be “largely worthless,” said Justice Elena Kagan in explaining the decision. Agri-business giants like Monsanto will be relieved by the ruling.

The road to a clean biofuels future is not easily traveled. Ceres Inc. in Thousand Oaks has some highly regarded science on its side as a producer of genetically modified seeds for crops used to make biofuels. Under the motto "Growing tomorrow's fuel today," Ceres has used advanced plant breeding and biotechnology to make better seeds for sophisticated versions of crops such as sweet sorghum, high-biomass sorghum, switch grass and miscanthus. Started in 1997 by a UCLA professor and his corporate partners with more than $50 million in private capital, Ceres makes seeds that can be converted into a new kind of ethanol using plant fibers instead of corn kernels or sugar cane.

Singer Barbra Streisand has donated $5 million to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. for a new women's heart center, hospital officials said Wednesday. Among other things, the Barbra Streisand Women's Cardiovascular Research and Education Program will expand research about female cardiovascular disease and raise awareness about it in the community, according to a statement released by Cedars-Sinai.

Tucked in cramped offices in the nation's capital, a fertile ground for flowering political careers, are some most unusual green thumbs. Last year alone, these modern-day Johnny Appleseeds helped to scatter 2.5 tons of seeds that produced $7 million worth of food. And they were planted in all 50 states as part of 6,000 projects for groups ranging from a convent in Santa Barbara to a soup kitchen in Brentwood, Long Island.

Baked A Novel Mark Haskell Smith Black Cat Press: 352 pp., $14 paper The first sentence of "Baked," the new thriller by Mark Haskell Smith, features a four-letter profanity. The second sentence goes: "He walked out of his house and into the white-light white heat of a bullet exploding out of a handgun…" — and the reader rests secure in the certainty that, whatever else it may or may not achieve, this narrative won't dither. Although "Baked" features odes to the virtues and variety of marijuana and not just murder and mayhem, its effect is rarely mellow.

When my husband and I moved into our new home in the East Bay in 1984, we built raised beds for our first vegetable garden. We ordered seeds from Renee Shepherd's catalog ("Seeds: A Starter Set for Epicures," Feb. 12), which made us even more enthusiastic about gardening because it was beautifully illustrated and packed with information and good recipes. After the seeds were planted, our seedlings were promptly eaten by garden pests. I wrote to Renee for pest control advice, and she took the time to send me a handwritten note with recommendations for safely ridding the garden of certain pests.

Norway on Monday began construction of an Arctic seed bank that is intended to be a "Noah's Ark" of global crop samples, protecting them from extinction. The $4.8-million vault near Longyearbyen on the island of Svalbard, in the Arctic Circle, will hold as many as 3 million types of seeds from all over the world, according to the Norwegian Agriculture and Food Ministry. The bank is scheduled to open in September 2007.